March 31, 2006

Booked

On
Demand Machine Corporation (ODMC) owns
5,465,213, an invention of Harvey Ross, which goes to on-demand book
publishing. Lightning Source, Ingram Industries and Amazon, sued by ODMC, were
found to have infringed '213, and so appealed (CAFC
05-1074), based upon
what they asserted was an erroneous claim construction provided to the jury at
trial.

March 29, 2006

Skeptical

The
eBay-MercExchange patent roadshow put on its dog-and-pony act for the Supreme
Court today in oral arguments lasting an hour or so. Besides expressing the
normal skepticism of jurists trying to dig to the essentials, some patent
surreality was on display.

March 24, 2006

Patent Transmission

Toyota
and Antonov, a Dutch patent licensing company, have been going at each other
over Antonov's patents for hybrid car transmission technology. It's a good
illustration of how international corporations fight patent enforcement.

March 23, 2006

Claim Construction Nightmare

Hillerich
& Bradsby (H & B) went to bat for a declaratory judgment action against
5,415,398, owned by Wilson Sporting Goods, and got a solid hit with the
trial court: noninfringement, plus costs & fees. Then it was Wilson's time at
the plate in the appeals court (CAFC
05-1103). Owing to
district court incompetence, this case is another log on the fire for a national
patent court.

March 22, 2006

Obviousness

Leonard
Kahn, trying to patent a reading machine for the blind, appealed his §103
rejection by the patent appeals board (PBAI) to the appeals court. The CAFC (04-1616)
in this case further clarified the ground rules for obviousness rejection.

March 21, 2006

Patent Reader

A free, and most welcome, patent search and retrieval site is up:
Patent Reader. Its .pdf patent
number retrieval is wonderful, as you can get multiple .pdfs in a single throw.
But, for power, Patent Reader's text search won't lose Delphion any customers.

March 20, 2006

Claim Construction Implant

Diro,
owner of
5,749,731, sued Straumann for infringement of its dental implant apparatus.
The Massachusetts district court tossed the case via summary judgment for
noninfringement. Diro appealed (CAFC
05-1168). Part of
Diro's problem was what was implanted in the preamble of the claim.

March 17, 2006

Computer Automation Not Patentable

An aspersion often cast towards business method patents is that such patents simply claim a known process that's been computerized. A common misconception is that automating a known process using a computer is per se patentable. It's not.

March 13, 2006

Generating Claim Construction

Michael Scroggie et al filed 09/401,198, and have had a hell of a time with
prosecution, so bad they had to take it all the way to the court of appeals (CAFC 05-1370). The '198
claims go to generating a web page. Given that, what do you suppose the
limitation "generating page data" means? The patent office examiner
and appeals board couldn't get a clue.

Hotheads

Mercury
is the planet closest to our sun; very hot. Hotheads from Mercury immigrated
here, settling in hot and sunny San Jose, California, and started their own news
organ: The Mercury News. Having been on Earth for a while now, the hotheads are
starting to form opinions, often not very good ones.

March 12, 2006

Injunction Provocateur

On
Friday, the Office of the Solicitor General, the Federal Government's
lawyer, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme court in the MercExchange v. eBay case,
where the center ring issue is granting an injunction for patent infringement,
particularly in the instance when the patent holder has indicated a willingness
to license, and the patent holder arguably has not practiced the invention. Arguing on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC), Justice
Department, and USPTO, the brief called on the Supreme Court to grant the injunction,
a notable flip-flop from the NTP v. RIM case, where its self-interest ran the
other way.

March 11, 2006

Harvesting Fruit

"[P]atents don't stimulate innovation; they stifle it. The notion of
"intellectual property rights" is spurious. The principle of property is needed
for physical objects because they are finite; hence property rights prevent
conflicts over the use of things. But ideas can be reproduced infinitely and
used simultaneously without conflict. Hence, as Thomas Jefferson realized,
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."" [from
The Free Liberal,
March 9, 2006]

March 9, 2006

Blue LED

Back in 1990, Shuji Nakamura, working for Nichia in Tokushima, southwest Japan, developed the blue
LED. It was a crucial breakthrough, paving the way for LED screens, and with
other uses as well. Nakamura was compensated
¥20,000 ($170) for the patent that came from his work. He wasn't satisfied.

March 8, 2006

Conflict of Interest

Andrews Corp. sued Beverly Manufacturing for patent infringement. While there
is no presumption of willful infringement, a clearing opinion commonly provides
evidence against such allegation. In this case, a law firm merger soiled
Beverly's clearing opinion.

March 3, 2006

RIM Off Hook

In
a measure of graciousness, NTP let RIM off the hook for patent infringement for only
$612.5 million, granting a perpetual license to NTP's patented wireless email
technology. The whispered figure for settlement had been closer to $1 billion.
RIM's graceless Jim Balsillie whined, "It's not a good feeling to write this
kind of check."

March 2, 2006

Claim Construction Myopia

Aspex
Eyewear sued Miracle Optics for infringing
RE37,545, over an eyeglass frame held together with magnets. The district
court limited claim scope owing to prosecution estoppel. The CAFC (04-1138)
reminded that a prosecution disclaimer of claim coverage required "reasonable
clarity and deliberateness."

The Blame Game

Awakened
from my slumbers reporting settlements between patent-laden computer companies
and a Supreme Court ruling that patents by themselves weren't so great as
to grant market power, I find blogging attorneys bit by Wall Street
Journal venom.

March 1, 2006

Settlement Drive

In
a last-minute fit of rationality, just before trial was to begin, computer disk drive maker
Quantum agreed to pay Sun Microsystems $25 million to settle patent infringement
of two StorageTek patents; Sun bought StorageTek last summer for $4.1 billion.

Market Power

In a nod to economic reality, and catching up with perceived Congressional
intent, in Illinois Tool Works v. Independent Ink, the Supreme Court (04-1329)
ruled that a patent does not necessarily confer market power.

Sponsored by

"A court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions. The analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ." - SCOTUS in KSR, 2007 -

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thought on the unthinking." - John Maynard Keynes -

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